ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 , titled “The House We Live In,” examines the television show The House We Live In. The beginning of the chapter relates McHarg’s decision to host the program to his participation in the Rockefeller Conference on Urban Criticism, held in Rye, New York in October of 1958. The subsequent discussion examines the interviews that McHarg conducted with scientists, social critics, and theologians and how the interviews to promote a broad reading of ecology that extended an organism’s relationship to its environment beyond science and quantification and into a boundless domain of philosophical ideas, ethical propositions, imaginative suppositions, and social patterns. During these discussions, the scientists explained how biophysical systems worked, the social critics explained why these systems were not operating the way they should, and the theologians unearthed moral correctives.
